In recent years, the explosion of technology has continued. New ideas have emerged to mix together various software and hardware solutions to provide the user with intuitive experiences that simplify the use of these new technologies. Currently, with the influx of various smart devices as well as the emergence of software solutions for browsers, a true platform independent method of communications may be possible.
Current web browsers allow peer-to-peer (P2P) communications between two clients, for example, through a Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) application programming interface (API). The P2P session enables quick exchange of audio, video and other data streams between the client machines. However, the two clients do not have a way to initiate the P2P connection. Thus, the clients are still dependent on a dedicated server in the network to establish the P2P connection.
This current architecture has various shortcomings. For example, there are bandwidth and maintenance costs for running a dedicated server. The dedicated server is active at all times, even when clients are not using it, and the server idle time results in a waste of resources. Furthermore, clients are dependent on their ability to connect to the server. Even in cases where no network issues hinder two clients communicating with each other, a network issue between the server and any one of the clients may prevent the connection from being established, creating a bottleneck. In addition, dependence on a dedicated server may present various security and privacy issues, and reduce the flexibility of the network. For example, a compromised server can allow malicious code to monitor and compromise the communication between the two clients.